“You have to look at a side like Ajax and say they’re the best in the world and ask: ‘What can we learn?’ You can’t copy them but you have to identify what we can use, and what we can’t.” 

When Terry Venables spoke to FourFourTwo just before Euro 96, he was hardly giving the game away. England’s head coach had enthused about Dutch football “ever since my youth team days”, and the influence had been noted - sometimes sarcastically, but mostly sympathetically. 

After all, under Venables’ predecessor Graham Taylor, England had regressed from the inconsistent but promising football of Italia 90 to a side of “Hit Les,” “Can we not knock it?” and a worryingly prominent role being played by Carlton Palmer. A long-ball side, in other words, and not even a very good one: a long-ball, lower division side, excluded from the top table, watching USA 94 from afar. 

In appointing Venables, the FA started to display what soon become a habit of hiring the man representing the opposite of the incumbent: the icily detached Hoddle was replaced by human jumping bean Keegan, whose limited Englishness begat Eriksson, whose foreignness begat McClaren, whose guilelessness begat Capello. 

Sincere flattery

Venables wasn’t just anyone-but-Taylor, he was the anti-Taylor, designed to replace country-cousin parochialism with continental panache: you don’t get to manage Barcelona by telling the lads it hoof it. He wanted players that were comfortable in possession and fluid in position: “A fusion of the best of English traditions with a strong Dutch influence,” he explained. As a major contemporary advertising campaign for a newfangled mobile phone provider and internet service provider repeatedly insisted, “the future’s bright, the future’s Orange”. 

Venables had spent almost two years coaching his men to play like the Dutch when the Euro 96 draw destined him to face the real thing. The draw also pitted England against Scotland, which caught more media attention, but Venables had already lobbied the FA (unsuccessfully) to bring back the regular England-Scotland fixture, abandoned since 1989. 

As one of only four seeds, England were somewhat unlucky to be picked against a country who had won the tournament in 1988, been semi-finalists in 1992 and World Cup quarter-finalists in 1994, and whose ranks would be largely made up of the Ajax team that had just reached its second successive Champions League final. No wonder they were clear pre-tournament favourites. They had also destroyed Bobby Robson’s side in Düsseldorf at Euro 88, and effectively ended Graham Taylor’s reign in Rotterdam five years later.

Yet there was discontent bubbling beneath the surface. “Ajax were on top of Europe but there were issues within the squad,” midfielder Ronald de Boer tells FFT. “Going into the Euros, there was a disparity in wages, with players assigned into A, B and C categories. It caused tensions which got dragged into the national team as well, meaning there were some very grumpy faces. The focus wasn’t completely there, and then you can lose to any country.” A disgruntled Edgar Davids, dropped for the second fixture against Switzerland, had been sent home days before the England game for openly criticising his manager, Guus Hiddink.

Most importantly for the Three Lions, few people knew how the Dutch worked quite like Venables. And he had a plan. 

“We looked at the Dutch and they were a very nice team, possession-based,” Paul Ince tells FourFourTwo. “They liked to pass square. If they had it at the back, it wasn’t a problem, but as soon as they got to a certain area, we’d press them. Terry said, ‘They’ll start dropping back and we’ll start playing.’” 

Plans into action

Despite having beaten Scotland with a back three, Venables promptly reverted to 4-4-2. With game-changing substitute Jamie Redknapp injured, it would be not just the same XI as the two previous Euro 96 games – after retaining the same XI just once in 18 friendlies –  but the same formation that had struggled against the Swiss. 

Why? Horses for courses, menus for venues. “You have to find ways of playing to suit your players and beat your opponents,” explained Venables. “It’s no good just developing a Plan A; you need to come up with Plan B and C as well.” 

Guus Hiddink’s side played a 3-4-3 with high wingers, so back came England’s full-backs. “Terry was very astute and wanted us to be compact so we could put maximum pressure on Holland,” said Steve McManaman, who was charged with augmenting the front two whenever possible to make it an unsettling 3v3. “I was sure they would be forced to play an extra defender, which would reduce their attacking threat,” calculated Venables. “Until they adjusted, the Dutch defence was left with a dilemma as defences hate it if they don’t have a numerical advantage.”

Embodying the gaffer’s prized positional flexibility, Gareth Southgate was to step back into the backline... up to a point: he was detailed to mark Dennis Bergkamp. The Arsenal star loved to float in the gaps between defence and midfield, but the very essence of Venables’ team was that there were no gaps. The BBC’s match graphic lined up the XI against Scotland as a 3-1-1-3-1-1: not so much a formation as a phone number. Now they would combine the defensive solidity of two banks of four with the attacking fluidity of their opponents. As Ince reminisces, “When you think about that game, just went to perfection: from being planned in training to executing it on the pitch.”

Perfection started on a balmy midsummer’s night: after two Saturday fixtures, a Tuesday evening. Having made their way from Bisham Abbey through the waving flags and cheering crowds, the squad learned from the teatime Group B denouement that the group winners would face Spain at Wembley, the runners-up meeting France at Anfield. Having scored more goals, England only needed a draw to top the group, but they’d do it in rather finer style. 

Early Dutch possession rarely encroached on English territory, as per the plan: “We started nicking a few balls, and then we got on the front foot,” recalls Ince. “All of a sudden, they started dropping back. As Terry had said, ‘They’ll start dropping back and we’ll start playing.’ Once we started playing, they couldn’t get the ball off us.”

So it proved on England’s first goal, which came from a tunnel-end Dutch corner. Anderton won an aerial duel with Jordi Cruyff, and Ince slipped the bouncing ball to Sheringham, deep in his own half. Taking his time despite a Cruyff lunge at his ankles, Sheringham sent McManaman scampering deep into the Dutch half. 

As The Independent’s Glenn Moore put it, “Once, the Liverpool winger would have tried to beat one man too many, or attempted a wasteful shot. No longer. This time he waited and, when Ince arrived, slipped a neat pass to him.” England’s defensive midfielder flicked it behind his standing leg, Danny Blind lunged in and the penalty was given. 

“That showed how adaptable we were,” recalled McManaman. “Somebody holds, someone goes, it’s all very flexible and makes life hard for the opposition. We had so much confidence.”

When FourFourTwo mentions the penalty award, Ince plays dumb: “Oh, I forgot about that, I’m glad you mentioned that! Was that me, was it?! There’s me thinking it was someone else!

“Funnily enough, I showed my son that a year ago and he thought I dived! I said ‘Thomas, in those days, we didn’t dive, son - football’s changed a lot…’ But yeah, we got the penalty and that set us up nicely.” Did it ever. Unlike McAllister’s spot-kick at the same end three days before, Shearer’s was never being saved, even with a 6ft5in Edwin van der Sar at full Stretch Armstrong extension guessing correctly. 

“After that, they just went, you could just see it,” recalls Ince. “They wanted to play at their own pace, they thought they could come to Wembley, big pitch, and play at their own pace. Once they couldn’t do that, they didn’t really have a Plan B, and we swamped them.”

It might have been different had David Seaman not denied his clubmate Bergkamp just before the break, but five minutes after the turnaround, Paul Gascoigne’s corner was nodded in by Sheringham. But better was to come just eight minutes later. Tony Adams intercepted a ball in the centre circle and briefly thought about bursting forward before wisely ceding possession to Gascoigne. 

The Geordie loped forward, wall-passing with Anderton on the left touchline and then McManaman, who sent him in at the corner of the 18-yard box. Wembley’s expectant half-roar went up an octave, expecting more Scotland-style magic; sure enough, he beat one man but then laid it back to Sheringham, who had pulled into a perfect pocket from which to shoot. 

“I thought about it: it was on a plate,” Sheringham told FFT, “but as I ran towards the ball I saw the fella running from Alan to me to block my effort.” So he laid it off again, eliciting a brief noise of disappointment from the Wembley crowd before they dismantled the roof as Shearer simply hammered the ball past Van der Sar; but for the netting, it might still be going now. “It was just a case of picking your spot and hitting it,” deadpanned Shearer.

It was more than that. In 20 seconds of possession England had probed, passed, dribbled, feinted and, frankly, walloped. “And you have to say it’s magnificent,” said the BBC’s Barry Davies to a gobstruck nation. “The build-up to that attack… the Dutch were simply watchers at somebody else’s party.”

Gascoigne tore off towards the benches while the strikers celebrated in the corner, Shearer forsaking his automatic one-arm, then two-arm salute for a satisfied smile and a nod of the head that said: Yeah, you’re not going mad, that was England. While Gascoigne danced at the Royal Box, McManaman hugged him with a face betraying something like disbelief. But it was all part of the plan.  

“That goal was perfect,” recalled Sheringham. “We overloaded and found the extra man. That’s what you look for in a team with Macca, Darren, Gazza and Alan. It was an attacking formation that wanted to interact, to pass and move. That was the beauty. You have to ask questions. Terry always asked questions.”

“We were determined to play a passing game,” said Venables. “If you’re going to play that way then you need players to want the ball and demand it in all sorts of situations. That’s what we had.”

At 3-0, Barry Davies was thinking about taking off one or both strikers to protect them from suspension, but they both still had a part to play. Five minutes after scoring his second and England’s third, Shearer bothered the ball off a defender and laid off for Anderton to crack one from 20 yards. A slight deflection off Blind meant that Van der Sar spilled it, and Sheringham got there first to mop up. Three goals within 12 minutes had destroyed the favourites.

Now Venables did make a substitution with suspensions in mind: Ince had earned his second tournament yellow with a drag-back on Cruyff, meaning he was out for the now-inevitable quarter-final. 

“David Platt came on for me and I was fuming,” Ince says. “I was effing and blinding, saying ‘Are you taking the piss? F**king hell!’ He said ‘But Incey, you’re suspended for the next game, I want to see how another player gets on’. I said ‘More f**king reason to keep me on!’ Even though it was such a great night for us, I wasn’t happy at the end of the game...”

Neither were the Scots. They’d edged in front of Switzerland at Villa Park and with the Wembley score at 4-0, were sneaking into the quarters on goal difference - and sending the favourites home. As England’s fans settled into party mode, Bergkamp sent sub Patrick Kluivert gliding between Adams and Pearce to tuck home through Seaman’s legs. 

“We got very lucky to score one, because 5-0 or 6-0 would have been more logical at that moment,” Ronald de Boer tells FFT. “It’s one of the most embarrassing defeats in my career – I was used to winning.”

Initial mild disappointment among some England fans soon turned to schadenfreude as calculations confirmed that by conceding, Venables’ team had accidentally sent the Scots towards the exit if Craig Brown’s men couldn’t score another. They couldn’t, and sympathy was in short supply south of the border. “The Dutch goal capped it off,” said Sheringham, “because that knocked the Scots out. Perfect!”

Despite saving their skins late on, the Dutch had suffered their heaviest defeat for 20 years, and they couldn’t call it undeserved. And, to be fair, they didn’t. Bergkamp led the chorus of admiration: “Before the competition, everyone was laughing about England and their style. They won’t be laughing now.”

If an England win was a surprise - FFT’s joky pre-tournament “best-case scenario” had England topping the group by holding Holland to a draw - the scoreline was so unexpected that it wasn’t even on Ladbrokes’ pre-match coupon. Edgar Davids had already been expelled amid deep divisions within the Netherlands camp, but Venables insisted “The Dutch didn’t give us that game, we had to take it away from them by playing our best football.” 

Payback time

For a rejuvenated squad’s elder statesmen, it was also it payback for that October 1993 night in Rotterdam, when Ronald Koeman evaded a red card and penalty for a pull on Platt before rumbling up the other end to score the goal that effectively ended England’s USA 94 hopes. 

Ince was one of the six survivors from that night to make the Euro 96 squad (Seaman, Tony Adams, Platt and Shearer also started, with Sheringham an unused sub); even a quarter of a century later positively bristles at the mention of the night that made Graham Taylor, who had unwisely allowed a documentary crew to follow him, a pre-internet meme. 

“Koeman should have been sent off, and we would have qualified,” says Ince in a tone that suggests argument would be unwise. “That killed me. It was in a couple of people’s minds, we wanted to exact a little bit of revenge on them. And we did.” 

The press were in raptures. The Independent’s Glenn Moore said “England outplayed the Dutch in every area.” The Sun’s John Sadler declared it “frightening. Not because of the result, but the manner in which it was achieved.” The Guardian’s David Lacey admired England not just beating the Dutch but “sweeping past them amid such a cannonade of goals.” The Daily Express’s Steve Curry enjoyed “a torrent of irresistible English play.” In The Times, Rob Hughes acclaimed the “pace, passion and power” on “the best night English football has known for many years.” The Daily Mail’s Jeff Powell, never one to shy away from a big claim, dared to compare: “The best since 1966.” 

The Guardian’s Richard Williams contextualised it in recent doubt and future delight: “England were, in a word, amazing. Against the best side they have so far met in this competition, they made those of us who have scorned their chances bend their knee to a performance in which they looked thoroughly credible candidates to win the Henri Delaunay Trophy. And even if they stumble at the next hurdle, or the one after that, at least Terry Venables and his team gave us a night we never expected, and will never forget.”

While the pressmen phoned through their hallelujahs, the players were contemplating their potential. Bryan Robson tells FFT that “to take on a really good team like that and beat them convincingly was the moment I knew this England squad were on to something special. That gave the lads the confidence to go on and reach the semi-finals.” Shearer explained why he was thinking two steps further: “That was the best performance, the best occasion, the best atmosphere, against very good opposition. It made us realise we could win the thing.”

As for Venables, although he couldn’t help enjoying the press reception, perhaps the sweetest report came from his opposite number, Guus Hiddink: “We must recognise that they taught us a lesson in every sense of the game.”

Expected to sail past the Swiss, narrowly outbox the Scots and struggle against the Dutch, Venables’ England had done it in reverse and were growing into the tournament, like a proper grown-up contender. How far could they go?

Originally published as part of the cover story of FourFourTwo’s February 2020 issue, then online.